Introduction

When the EU ministers of foreign affairs, meeting informally at Kastellorizo on the island of Rhodes on 2-3 May 2003 tasked Javier Solana, High Representative for the Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP) with the drafting of a strategic concept, this came as a complete surprise to most observers, or at least to the editors of this volume. Until then the adoption of anything like a strategy for the CFSP had been thought politically unfeasible in a European Union divided between ‘Atlanticists’ and ‘Europeanists’. Academic publications calling for the adoption of a strategy had been laid aside as certainly interesting, perhaps even welcome, but in any case unrealistic proposals (Van Staden et al. 2000; Biscop 2002). But about a month later already, at the Thessalonica European Council on 19-20 June, Solana presented his first draft, which was subsequently discussed by those same observers, along with diplomats, the military, NGO representatives etc., at three seminars organised by the European Union for that purpose in the fall of 2003: Rome (19 September), Paris (6-7 October) and Stockholm (20 October).1 On 12 December 2003 the European Council meeting in Brussels adopted the final document, A Secure Europe in a Better World – European Security Strategy (ESS) (European Council 2003a).